Forms

I can appreciate all that is available to us on the Internet. But until I actually apply a table or form to the website it is still all foreign to me.

Here is a site that gives a lot of direction on scripting forms: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp

This site talked about a book that seemed helpful http://www.lukew.com/ff/.    The book Designing Web interfaces outlines 75 patterns for designing rich interactions on the Web with detailed descriptions of the advantages and disadvantages of each solution.

This site shows you how to create a simple survey http://wufoo.com/blog/.

Typography

When I took the first Typography class (the one I call the Calligraphy class) I didn’t understand the importance of Typography.  Now that I am using it in designs it has a different significance.  I find it hard to pick the right type to use at times.  I always notice type in signs were ever I go.  I notice a church that used the Chiller type in the name of the church.  Why?  All you are telling me is that you have a creepy group.  What were they thinking?  I can easy see the “what not to do” signs and hope I never make that mistake.  I will air on the conservative side.

 

Here is a quote from a web designer’s blog “Using typography.css is optional. Not all web sites have the same typographical needs. The main purpose is to give character to the project. If we imagine the grid as the naked body than typography would be the clothes. I use ” lucida grande”,”lucida sans unicode” like main typeface. For titles H1 to H6 I used Georgia. I like to mix Serif and sans-serif fonts.”

 

 

http://www.vcarrer.com/2009/02/golden-grid.html  This person’s site is a “what not to do”.  His page is crammed up against the left side and no design was used in setting up his site.  I wouldn’t take his advice.

You may remember I had said I wanted to be a computer nerd, well I don’t want to be a typography nerd.  But if you are interested in becoming one: “If you prefer to call capital letters “majuscules,” you probably aren’t the type to shy away from words like kerning and ligature, either. And that’s okay, because there are games that cater even to you typography nerds, or at least game, singular: KERN, available now from the Apple AppStore.” http://technabob.com/blog/2009/02/17/kern-the-game-for-typography-nerds/

http://ilovetypography.com/  This site is devoted to discussion and photography with Typography.  The even have The Week in Type articles.

http://www.trendhunter.com/slideshow/font-typography . This site has the trendy homemade fonts.  I like the one that is made out of human spinal cords!

Web Design Studios

Blue Print Design studio http://blueprintds.com/

 

They specialize in advertising for high end restaurants. They show a classy picture of the inside of the restaurants filled with the clientele that they usually service.  The design firm then carries the branding of the restaurant and the food through out the design.  They are based in Chicago and seems to focus on local shops as well and restaurants.

 

When they feature a project for you to review they eliminate any distractions on the side so you can focus on the center screen as they show the project. The background is a soft light blue and white so it doesn’t clash or take away from the color scheme they are showcasing for each project..

 

Because each site they do is so different and appears they company understands what the  customer is about.   I believe they are really listening and providing what the customer wants.  They do web design as well as printing ads.

 

I liked their list of choices that I will take ideas from for my site:

· custom web design

· custom WordPress site or blog development

· ecommerce web site design

· flash banner, intro, web site design

· cms or content management system development

· social media site design

· small budget web design

· small business web design

· restaurant web design 

 

Design Studio One http://www.designstudioone.com/

 

This one was very corporate, boring and not my style.  What I did like is that it portrayed at one glance exactly who they were serving: white men with ties.  It was very neat and organized with very little color.  They also list quotes from previous “big wigs” customers to throw names around to get other customers.

 

An option they had that I would like on my site was: client log in to view your project online.  This is a great idea for someone who plans on micromanaging the designer.  Instead of answering every call from the client and get interrupted.  The clients can view the progress on line.

 

There are really some bad sites out there.  Ones that you could tell where designed 20 years ago and never updated. This one I could not stand : http://www.tebodesignstudio.com/  If your logo is a cup of tea, you give me the impression you are in no hurry to finish my project.

This one was so different than anything I have seen http://www.ladesignstudio.com/.  Their website is filled with an image with moving objects.  When viewing there previous work a screen pops up to display the projects.

 

They seem to focus on green friendly project and social awareness projects. They do a fantasist job with images, especially a site they created for a photography studio.  I know I cannot replicate what they do with images in this class but am inspired for the future.

 

 

Comps for review

Hi guys,  Please give me feedback on my comps.

                 

Float Layouts

I found a blog by Antonio Lupetti, “Engineer, Pro Blogger, Mac user, Web addicted.” His site is woork.blogspot.com. He has tutorials with scripting. He showed how to create a horizontal design of scrolling across the top of the page. Pretty neat idea and he has it all scripted out for you.

I found another site: css.design.com that has lots of tutorials. I bet you guys already knew about this but I didn’t. Basically if you wanted to do something specific on your website you could just do a search and find the exact scripting. It was clear in what I read that the browsers read things and make their own interpretations. Using @import for your style sheet will avoid this.

Another designer, Matt Ryall created two boxes and showed the float problems. He showed how each box moved depending on which browser it was viewed in. He stresses how important positioning is. I had this problem with my website all the time. I would preview it in the browser and it looked fine. So I would publish it and my husband would look at it at work and it would be all unaligned. When you are using a template like I was and didn’t know scripting, it was much more work to fix things.

Learning from the Experts

I have had a pretty frustrating week with being over whelmed in my Motion Graphic class and being the only one always behind in the Script class.  When I can home and spoke to my husband about my discouragement he asked if I had doubts I was in the right field. The timing for this assignment was perfect for me.  This was one of my favorite assignments to date.  I loved reading about the different projects.  I cannot wait to do web design for a living.

 

http://www.reallyworried.com/

When developing this website, Stuff and Nonsense did their initial design in a web browser because they said working in CSS sooner saved them time and money.  I assume only an expert could do that.  They talk about a “fully working mark up”.  Can someone explain to me what that means?

http://www.liv.ac.uk/
I was very interested in the Liverpool University website.  I work for many years at the University of Texas Southwestern medical center.  Because they are a school, hospital, research center and health clinics all in one, the website was overwhelming to follow.  Liverpool is a smaller scale but the designers have divided it so clear on the home page. It’s very user friendly.

I got advice from Stuff and Nonsense that I am going to follow from what I read for small businesses.  They recommend using Flickr on your site.  It can bring customers to your site from Flickr and increase your activity on the browsers.

http://www.happycog.com/design/dictionary/
Happycog.com took on the project of helping improve Dictionary.com.  Can you image the amount of material on that site?  The problem was inconsistencies when different browsers were used.  The information, including logos, looked so different between browsers that people weren’t sure if they were on the same site.  I thought “what if this happened on my banking site”?  I wouldn’t feel safe to do online banking.

http://www.simplebits.com/work/
Simplebits.com has a great website plan if you want an example.  I think it’s more formal than most but that must reflect the companies they are aiming for. I think we would all love to work for the fun, hip companies but the big money is also in the serious companies.  I guess you know you’re successful when you can pick only the companies you want.  A large part of our design process for ReallyWorried took place in a web browser, rather than in the more traditional design environments of Adobe Photoshop or Fireworks.

A large part of our design process for ReallyWorried took place in a web browser, rather than in the more traditional design environments of Adobe Photoshop or Fireworks.

We also created the site’s user interface and designed a visitor’s experience when using the site, adding interactivity to the rich visual design.We also created the site’s user interface and designed a visitor’s experience when using the site, adding interactivity to the rich visual design.We also created the site’s user interface and designed a visitor’s experience when using the site, adding interactivity to the rich visual design.We also created the site’s user interface and designed a visitor’s experience when using the site, adding interactivity to the rich visual design.We also created the site’s user interface and designed a visitor’s experience when using the site, adding interactivity to the rich visual design.

Creating a Site Design Plan

I definitely agree with the author about thinking from the user’s point of view. I think the business may be too close to the subject to be able to see the user’s perspective.  Since I created my own business website, I had this problem.  I was lucky that some customers were able to tell me when a certain part was confusing to them and I could change it.

 

I would use her approach about making the goal more than just making money.  If you cannot keep the customer on the site (they give up out of frustration) you will never make money.

 

The example of the photography magazine seemed pretty complex.  If you didn’t first write a site map you could miss some key points.

XHTML and CSS

All I can say is “Thank goodness for the tutorial and Wikipedia”.  It put things in a simple terms I could understand.  HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the content of the document on a website.  HTML is the basic required structure that includes tags which surround the content and apply meaning to it.  CSS  (Cascading Style Sheets) is the presentation of the document (color and font, etc).

XHTML is: Extensible Hypertext Markup Language.   XHTML  allows automated processing to be performed using standard XML tools—unlike HTML which is more complex.

World Wild Web standards is a set of standardized best practices for building web sites, and a philosophy of web design and development.

I have used Frontpage to create a website but just the templates so I am familiar with the look of HTML but not writing it.  I am looking forward to learning scripting next semester.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML

http://www.callendercreates.com/blog/category/html/

http://ajaxian.com/by/topic/css

Podcasting

My question about Podcasting was how is it different than adding a video to your website.  What I found is that it is an RSS feed that like a blog it is produced and distributed on a regular schedule. Podcasts are distributed automatically to subscribers whenever a new one is produced. The subscribers transfer downloaded podcasts onto MP3 players, iPods or cell phones for listening or viewing at their convenience.

I would like to subscribe to get a podcast if I found one I was interested in. I prefer the ones with video.  I found some interesting podcast for lawyers and politicians, not for me.  I will have to keep looking. I don’t have an ipod but would listen on my computer.  Does anyone have a podcast they subscribe too?

Screencasting is more of a training tool for software products.  But it allows anyone to view the products capabilities before buying it or train staff.

If you have a blog that a person has subscribed to when you add a podcast will they get a notification or do they also have to subscribe to the podcast?

I found a site that has free screencasting tools: http://zaidlearn.blogspot.com/2008/10/8-free-screencasting-tools-for-tony.html

http://www.slaw.ca/2008/11/13/screencasting-triumph/

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/nov/03/denver-based-firm-dives-into-podcasting/

http://musicianstools.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/podcasting-what-is-it-how-do-i-do-that/

http://tnc-csvw.blogspot.com/2008/11/finding-niche-for-your-business-podcast.html

Information Trapping

Information Trappping is doing a smarter search for information on the web.  I think web designers are learning how to build in better word searches as well as search engines improving the searches.  But there are so many websites out there it is up to us to use the tools available to reduce our time. Now I start with a Google blog search.  Using as few words I can and putting them in quotes. Then after that I follow the references bloggers site about the topics I am interested in.  This saves me the time searching and lets the others present me with the best information.

I understand there is a special way to receive posts of the information you are looking for.  Can anyone walk me through how to do it?  I read some of the Google guide, which I now know what the “I feel lucky” button is for.  Is the steps in there?

 

http://www.researchbuzz.org/wp/2008/01/29/information-trapping-2008-style/

http://futureperfectpublishing.com/2007/09/03/information-trapping-an-interview-with-tara-calashain/

http://www.worldbusines.com/?p=807